McCormick Biography

Matthew McCormick is a 7th-grade teacher who will soon begin his third year at Woodstock Union Middle

School. McCormick's path to the classroom was filled with zigs, zags, and zip-a-dee-doos. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College in 2005 with a degree in the lucrative field of American Studies, he donned a reporter's hat, covering the trials and tribulations of communities in Virginia and then New Hampshire and Vermont. Soon, however, McCormick decided that a life covering selectboard meetings wasn't for him. Feeling a bit lost, he became an early practitioner of the so-called quarter-life-crisis, moving across the country to Montana, where he sought employment in a variety of jobs that, besides their American location, had nothing to do with his college major: ski lift operator, trail worker, landscaper, gun store clerk.

It was while McCormick was at this last job that he stumbled into the classroom as a substitute teacher in the schools of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana. He found that he very much enjoyed the enthusiasm and silliness of young kids. In addition, his future wife had recently graduated from a teacher preparation program at Montana State University. After a year in the classroom, she was staring down a summer vacation -- the first of her adult life. "Summer vacation!?" McCormick thought to himself. "That sounds awesome!" Plus, he figured going back to school could help further the adventure he'd started in Montana, where he'd reveled in the state's wilderness backpacking, fishing, and skiing. What's wilder than Montana? Alaska. So in the summer of 2010, McCormick began a one-year teacher preparation program through the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

McCormick quickly found out that there is more to teaching than summer vacation. Standards, lesson plans, assessments, oh my! But in addition to the work involved, McCormick also found that there was great reward, particularly in the relationships he was able to forge with young people. After a year's preparation, McCormick found himself in his own classroom at North Pole Middle School in North Pole, AK.

At first, he thought of middle school as a stepping stone, a place where he could get his feet wet, prove his mettle, and earn a position at a high school, where he thought "real" learning takes place. But the more he worked with young adolescents, the more he liked working with young adolescents. Middle school began to feel like a home rather than a building.

Those early years were pretty rough. Unfortunately, funding in Fairbanks was drying up and the school he was in moved away from the middle school model and transformed back into a junior high after his first year: students shuffled through seven 45-minute disconnected class periods every day. It wasn't ideal, but McCormick figured that's the way it was done everywhere.

Then, a revelation: after relocating back to Vermont after several years away, McCormick moved back into a school committed to middle school. He met with his teammates every other day. What is more, he began working toward his Middle Level endorsement. Those classes, particularly the ones with Susie Giardin, taught him about the specific needs of young adolescent learners and what he could do in his classroom to meet them. Excited about what was happening in his classroom, McCormick brought Giardin to the rest of his team. This summer, they completed several days of professional development centered around meeting the needs of their adolescent learners. They have committed to a number of new initiatives, from creating a team identity to developing interdisciplinary units, that have them more excited about the beginning of school than ever before.